Opinion: Safety before political theater in Paul Ecke Central rebuild

The stalled rebuild of Paul Ecke Central School has devolved from a celebrated community investment into a bitter battle over accountability amid election-season politicking. Let’s review the facts.

Background: Funded by the $60 million Measure Z bond, the project has sat idle as an exposed dirt lot since demolition began in August 2026. Why? The school started the permit process too late and did not have permits in place when they officially closed the school grounds to begin demolition.

While the frustration of displaced families is entirely understandable, the growing pressure campaign to expedite the rebuild raises serious concerns about whether critical safety regulations could be compromised. The push to accelerate the project should not come at the expense of public safety — endangering not just children, but everyone. The optics appear political.

Right now, the narrative is being driven by parents, an online petition and specific political candidates who view the City of Encinitas as an obstructionist bureaucracy.

A parent-led group, PEC ASAP, has launched an online petition calling for the expedited rebuilding of Paul Ecke Central School, citing the disruption to students and families and the need to return children to their neighborhood campus.

Supporters of the expedited rebuild point to real threats of winter weather damage, escalating construction costs and the social toll on students to justify an “all-hands-on-deck” rush to reopen. Some are even demanding that the city grant “exceptions” to site constraints to fast-track the permits.

However, beyond the emotional appeals, a more troubling reality emerges: The Encinitas Union School District is being asked to comply with non-negotiable safety mandates it has allegedly failed to resolve for over 18 months.

The city’s regulations are not arbitrary red tape. They center on critical coastal development permits, necessary right-of-way dedications and vital flood mitigation — a pressing concern given the historic drainage issues that already require active pumping on North Vulcan Avenue.

Most alarmingly, the current district plans reportedly include a 50% reduction in on-site vehicle queueing. This may be the issue. It is the architectural design problem. In simple terms, the school drop-off design does not meet code, according to the Current Municipal Code Traffic Impact Analysis.

One would wonder why a school parental activist group would pressure the city to bypass basic safety needs on school property. Lest we need reminding, the community is still grieving recent tragic traffic deaths on our local streets; intentionally engineering a traffic hazard onto North Vulcan Avenue and Union Street is unacceptable.

This issue has two sides. One is a school design issue that is not passing the TIA for traffic queueing and that needs to be rectified by the EUSD architect. The other side has interpreted the issue differently and turned it into what appears to be a campaign: a manufactured crisis.

Separately, the political relationships involving Parents of EUSD, another local parent advocacy organization whose founders include candidates Bill Shen and Brad Lefkowits, warrant scrutiny. Although Parents of EUSD denies any involvement in the PEC ASAP campaign, the organization’s political endorsements, its members’ public activities and social media interactions raise questions, in my view, about whether it is exerting influence behind the scenes.

By framing the delay as a city issue rather than an EUSD design issue, this pressure is ideal for election-year momentum and appears to be championed by candidates like Shen, a founding member of Parents of EUSD, turning a crucial infrastructure requirement into a photo op.

Stirring up residents and school parents, and issuing ultimatums to the city to force approval of an inadequate and unsafe school drop-off design, is not advocacy; it is bullying.

We all share the same goal. We want the students of Paul Ecke Central back on their home campus as quickly as possible. We want to protect our taxpayer dollars from the inflation of delayed construction. But doing so by willfully ignoring traffic hazards and environmental standards is a concession we cannot afford.

A school should be a safe haven. It is time to end the political theater. Stakeholders must abandon demands for dangerous exceptions, stop the finger-pointing and commit to the hard, unglamorous work of redesigning the site to meet the safety standards our children and our community deserve.

Pete Albanese
Leucadia

Editor’s note: This commentary has been updated to clarify that PEC ASAP, a separate parent-led group, organized a petition and advocacy campaign concerning the Paul Ecke Central rebuild. The commentary previously contained references that could be interpreted as attributing those efforts to Parents of EUSD.